My greatest dilemma is whether to focus my energy on present issues or on dreaming up future ones. Peter Drucker said that a good businessperson must have his “nose to the grindstone and eyes to the hills.” He didn’t divulge the proportions.
I had planned to spend the day doing my finances, reading Wikinomics, and getting back into my exercise routine. It’s noon here and I’ve done none of these. Instead I’ve answered email, wandered around in Second Life, surfed the net, thought about the next steps for building Internet Time Wiki into something useful, and polished at article that goes out tomorrow.
The article’s on using virtual worlds for learning. Three of us are collaborating on the writing via Google docs. It’s tempting to get philosophical on this. Who’s really writing the article? If my avatar does part of my research, does he get author credit, too?
What happens when Moore’s Law makes virtual worlds hi-res, with lightening reflexes and cool collaboration tools? A few friends of mine are aleady addicted to Second Life and have just about made it their First Life. Will society flip into another mode when shared mind is on the other side of the screen, and avatars look so real you are tempted to take one home with you?
Day-dreaming is another thief of the time I need to read Wikinomics. Maybe I’ll cajole myself into thinking that I’ll simply live wikinomics instead of reading about it.
As for Internet Time Wiki, I could use the blogosphere’s help. The red circle below contains my current vision:
Among the things I hope to accomplish are:
- hosting conversations between business managers and learning professionals
- sharing ideas that address the current imbalance between formal and informal learning
- making my thoughts transparent so I can readily engage in conversation beyond the basics
- showing off my writing, photos, concepts, and thought experiments
- recommend and showcase approaches and solutions I belive will make a difference
- offering a 24/7 salon where people can ask questions and share experiences
- convince people to pay Jay to speak, advise, and travel the world on their dime
- experimenting with new approaches to collaboration and learning
Anyone know of a kick-ass app to promote conversation? I am looking for something lightweight that makes it easy for people to connect and converse.
The site will be free, but I’m conflicted about membership issues. Registration? Vandalism? Join the netowrk?
For the present, it is only me doing this, so the whole deal must be easy to maintain. To the extent possible, it should be self-sustaining.
And I encourage participation. If someone’s got a hot idea, I encourage them to run with it.
There are more issues, but that’s all for now. If you have suggestions, either comment or post to the Internet Time Wiki.
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Hi Jay,
Your thought “conflicted about membership issues” makes me wonder.
(At the risk of trying to teach the master) Is the rapidly developing idea of OpenID the way to go? It is not intended to solve all of the problems that you would face but could play a very helpful part IMO.
I have had a brief look at a few sites after Googling on OpenID. It looks as if OpenID could really take of any day now. Time I think for me to get an Open ID.
Perhaps you’d find our platform useful. It’s called Zendle (www.zendle.com). We’ve modified an open-source learning content management system and added a marketplace and some collaboration tools.
You can create and host premium content (articles, surveys, quizzes), host your files (wikis, videos, audio, PowerPoint etc.), and have live interaction (Zendle is integrated with Skype and Jabber.) The content that you create can be either offered for an internal group of users (where you add the users) or can be put up for purchase on the Zendle marketplace.
The twist is that all learners have authoring rights (our premise is that everybody has some sliver of knowledge that could be useful for others.)
Please do take a look and let me know if this is what you had in mind.
Regards,
Vikram Narayan
Zendle
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